


Smoke

by Tierfal



Series: Embers [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Angst, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One memento remains.</p>
<p>[Major spoilers for '03/CoS.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I speedfic and add it to my NaNo total because of [terrible-good headcanons](http://karasuya.tumblr.com/post/50475682847/by-heres-one-to-pull-at-your-heartstrings).

art by [あやめ](http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=368535), posted the fantastic karasuya [here](http://karasuya.tumblr.com/post/50475682847/by-heres-one-to-pull-at-your-heartstrings)

It’s starting to lose the smell.

He keeps it in a painstakingly clean cardboard box, wrapped in brown paper, locked into his suitcase, pushed under the bed. He takes it out less and less now—he waits until he’s _aching_ for it; waits until his heart is so heavy it hangs like cold lead, blocking his throat, and he can’t walk another step without it swinging hard against his ribs. He waits until the walls are closing in—he can see them, sometimes, out of the corner of his eye; they _cinch inward_ ; he’d swear on it; the shadows creep nearer all the time. He waits until the numbing buzz of the brandy wears off to throbbing, empty silence; he waits until the gray sky presses down on his shoulders until they bow and slope and sag, and his right arm is so heavy he lets it dangle, and his spine feels too fragile to hold him up.

He waits until he doesn’t have a choice, really.

Then he listens for Alfons’s pencil scratching, or for the pots and pans banging around in the kitchen that actively resents people’s elbows, or for the eerie undiluted quiet of actual solitude. Only when he’s sure—only when he has a moment spun out for it, only when there’s a pocket of isolation for this _alone_ —does he draw the suitcase out from below the bedframe.

He’s learned that he prefers a time when the light is strong through the windows—as strong as it ever gets, at least—so he can memorize the individual stitches. He traces every last line; he smoothes out the wrinkles from the careful folds and lays it out over his knees to see the whole spread of it. He skims his open palms out along the shoulders on both sides. The fabric runs broader than the man; that was a clever optical trick of the designer, and no real surprise; the man beneath was—is, _is_ —slighter, smaller, smoother, softer, warmer than all this. The man who owned this grinned when these fingertips hesitated over these buttons, leaned down when they fumbled at the catches, caught them and raised them and kissed them when they shook. The man who owned this whispered _Take your time_ , as if they had enough. The man who owned this carded hands that had murdered, hands that had razed, through the hair straggling down yellow-gold and tangled in the firelight—slowly, gently, carefully. Tenderly. Like it mattered. Like it was the only thing that did.

The man who owned this loved him, once.

He _must_ remember.

Because it’s starting to smell like coal and bratwurst; it’s starting to smell like woolen blankets and the biting crispness of winter in the air. It’s starting to smell like books and paper and strong beer and the odd mustiness of the old suitcase.

It used to smell like fine cologne and firesmoke and absolute safety. It used to smell like a place where the world stopped, where the weight lifted, where the heart was full—if only for a moment. It used to smell like one tiny, fleeting, unlikely chance at something other than the life around it.

It used to smell like happiness.

He must remember.

It’s starting to lose the smell.

He’s starting to lose his mind.


End file.
